Tomb Raider

Why is everyone trying to call a this a poor woman’s Raider’s of the Lost Ark? Tomb Raider is based on a video game, folks!

A video game inspired story thus has a different set of filmic expectations to match – which this does it high fashion. Angelina Jolie’s Lara Croft in Tomb Raider (nice extra’s in the Special Collector’s Edition) is awesome in the most brilliant casting decision of the year, and the exotic ruins of Cambodia and Antarctica are on target, in a video game kind of way.

Croft is an archeologist out to stop the Secret Society of the Luminati from forming a sacred triangle which would unlock the “secret of light” and allow them to control time. This is a feast-de-force for adrenaline junkies, with arcade paced action in Hong Kong quantities.

Whether this film could have worked without Jolie is uncertain, and her super-cool demeanor somehow lifts the weak script and the other characters, transcending the movie somehow like a good star can do. Her real life dad John Voigt (Midnight Cowboy again!) plays her dead father and gives the film a nice little bit of self-referentiality.

The movie doesn’t take itself too seriously and creates the hippest female character since Irma Vep. Some are calling Lara Croft a feminist icon, but there is no need to hog her, ladies, she belongs to us all.